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Sara Bell's 'Beautiful World' solid, eccentric, gentle, intriguing from
The Durham Herald-Sun (NC) Tuesday marked the release date of Sara Bell and her band Regina Hexaphone's new album "The Beautiful World" (Erie Recordings). Bell and her band will perform songs from that new release at two local venues in the coming week. Bell and Regina Hexaphone will be performing at Sadlack's in Raleigh, with The Moaners, Sunday and at The Cave in Chapel Hill on Thursday. "The Beautiful World" is an artistically solid, eccentric piece of work. Bell is the principal songwriter, and her varied musical background translates here most noticeably in the stylistic differences between songs and the pleasing unpredictability of the arrangements. Margaret White's violin provides wonderful colors on several tunes, including "Cicadas" and "Ice," and arrangements featuring Julie Oliver's trumpet and Chris Eubank's cello are inspired. "The Beautiful World" is somewhat esoteric as a stylistic statement, yet whatever here that's obscure is intriguing rather than pretentious. The overall feel of the record is gentle, but the ideas at play are challenging. Sara Bell's family is originally from Cleveland, but they moved to the Triangle when Sara was 7. "I'm from North Carolina, as far as I'm concerned," she said. "When I got older and started traveling, I realized how totally Southern I am." Bell graduated from N.C. State with a bachelor's degree in history, though her contribution thus far has been mainly in the making of music history. She started out on piano as a child, moved on to banjo and, eventually, guitar. The first band she was in was Angels of Epistemology. Bell subsequently played with the band Dish. "Around 1988-89 I also started playing a bit with Laird Dixon," Bell recalled. "He was writing a lot of great songs and I just had a terrific time playing with him. His stuff was a lot like the way I'd started out playing with Angels of Epistemology." Part of her attraction to Dixon's music was that his sound fit nicely with her individual style of playing the banjo. "You see, when I picked up the banjo and started plucking around on it, trying to play country music or bluegrass, everything came out sounding like eastern European Gypsy music," she said. "I had this Earl Scruggs book and I tried so hard to pick like a real bluegrass picker, but I just couldn't do it. Luckily, my banjo sound worked with the material Laird was writing and I just kept doing music with him." Laird's writing in the late 1980s eventually led to the formation of Shark Quest, a band Bell has played with since its beginnings. The band plans to release an album in August. Bell's decade-long involvement with Shark Quest did not hinder her from penning a collection of songs that have become the debut album for her band Regina Hexaphone. "Once Dish broke up, I'd written a bunch of songs and I was working with Jerry Kee, who owns Duck Kee recording studio, recording the songs," Bell said. "I'm not real savvy about making records, but Jerry and I did record a bunch of stuff. My friend Chris [Clemmons] heard the tape of the songs and said, 'Let's get together, let's play your songs,' so we did." She and Clemmons then spent a couple months playing in Bell's living room and later played a gig at The Cave. Zeke Hutchins [Tift Merritt & The Carbines] started sitting in on drums, and Greg Humphreys [Brown Mt. Lights] was sitting in on guitar. A couple of months later Margaret White joined the band. "She's an unbelievably amazing soulful violinist," Bell said of White. "Once Tift's first album came out, Zeke got real busy on the road with Tift, so Jerry Kee volunteered to fill in on drums. He's a really inventive drummer. Chris Clemmons has been playing bass with us since our living room days." Regina Hexaphone's sound does not fit into a neat category, Bell said. "I don't think any of the music I've played in my entire life has fit into any category. It would be so much better if it did, because it's so much easier for people to latch onto a label. I am pretty obsessed with Patty Smith and Ricky Lee Jones, and Laura Nyro was an early favorite. I think you can hear their influences in these songs." http://www.herald-sun.com/features/columns/VanVleck/88-486945.html |